Recharge As You Revere: Charge At Church, It Pays To Praise

Think of all the places you might go in a week that would give your electric car enough time for a top-up. The mall? The cinema? Restaurants?

How about church? EV networking company Coulomb Technologies has revealed that Wooden Cross Lutheran church in Woodinville, Washington will be the first church in the country to have its own EV charging station. It's the first church to benefit from their $37 million program to install 4,600 public and home charging stations around the country.

Those few hours you spend at church would be enough for a worthwhile top-up before heading out to afternoon activities with the family or maybe off to the mall where you could top-up some more while you shop.

For Wooden Cross Lutheran, offering the opportunity for its congregation to recharge their electric vehicle goes hand-in-hand with their "Green Team" group to "make Wooden Cross more eco-friendly and to promote communication of conservation ideas and actions amongst our congregation."

Could church be the place to recharge your car, as well as your soul?

Perhaps, though to ensure patrons do nothing that would require confession afterwards, we think further investment in charging points might be required once more EVs start to hit the roads. This is especially the case in the limited regions that many EV roll-outs are taking place, resulting in higher concentrations of electric cars in some communities.

Businesses such as Coulomb are hoping to convince organisations that they can make money not just by running charging stations, but also through selling their goods and services to EV owners who can spare a minute to shop.

We're not sure this would catch on at many places of worship unless they happen to have gift shops, but at malls and restaurants there might be more of a market for EV-related produce.

Whether your local church takes up the option for a charging point or not though, we'd like to leave you with a piece of useful consumer advice: You might have the cleanest car in the parking lot, but if your EV charging app bleeps in the middle of a sermon, you'll get the dirtiest of looks...